2020 Sri Lankan Parliamentary Elections

So close, yet so far

What if they got a few more votes…

Published in

On Politics

3 min readAug 10, 2020

Many expected Sunil Handunnetti of the JJB to win a seat in Matara. In fact, he did come tantalizingly close. If the JJB won just 4,212 more votes in Matara, they would have won a seat. And SH might have been “in”.

But there were other examples. The JBB itself came much closer to winning seats in Kalutara and Hambantota, than it did in Matara.

In this article, I list some “so close, yet so far” cases. Where with a few more votes, more seats would have been won.

[For clarity, I only look at cases with less than 10,000 votes, or 15% of what the votes the party actually won.]

TMVP (1 close calls)

In the National List, the TMVP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the OPPP (increasing their total to 1), with 67 or + 0.6% more votes.

EPDP (1 close calls)

In the National List, the EPDP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the OPPP (increasing their total to 1), with 6,295 or +10.7% more votes.

SLFP (1 close calls)

In the National List, the SLFP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the OPPP (increasing their total to 1), with 1,180 or + 2.3% more votes.

UPA (1 close calls)

In Batticaloa, the UPA would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SLPP (increasing their total to 1), with 2,370 or + 8.1% more votes.

SDPT (1 close calls)

In Vanni, the SDPT would get an extra seat, at the expense of the EPDP (increasing their total to 1), with 1,246 or +12.9% more votes.

SJB (2 close calls)

In Kalutara, the SJB would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SLPP (increasing their total to 3), with 591 or + 0.8% more votes.

In Gampaha, the SJB would get an extra seat, at the expense of the JJB (increasing their total to 5), with 8,186 or + 3.4% more votes.

JJB (3 close calls)

In Kalutara, the JJB would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SLPP (increasing their total to 1), with 1,662 or + 5.5% more votes.

In Hambantota, the JJB would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SLPP (increasing their total to 1), with 4,112 or +13.6% more votes.

In Matara, the JJB would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SLPP (increasing their total to 1), with 4,214 or +11.8% more votes.

SLPP (4 close calls)

In Vanni, the SLPP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the EPDP (increasing their total to 2), with 1,390 or + 3.8% more votes.

In Nuwara-Eliya, the SLPP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SJB (increasing their total to 6), with 7,223 or + 3.6% more votes.

In Badulla, the SLPP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the SJB (increasing their total to 7), with 7,897 or + 3.1% more votes.

In Gampaha, the SLPP would get an extra seat, at the expense of the JJB (increasing their total to 14), with 8,186 or + 1.5% more votes.